Word of the Day: May 4, 2009 ~ purple

purple (pur-puhl) - noun

Purple is "any color having components of both red and blue."

Used in the written form before 1000. The Greek word porphura, a word of Semitic origin, denoted a sort of shellfish from which a reddish dye was obtained (known as Tyrian purple, because it was produced around Tyre, in what is now Lebanon, it was highly prized in ancient times, and used for dying royal garments). It hence came to be used for the dye itself, and for cloth coloured with it, and it passed in this latter sense (with the particular connotation of 'royal cloth') via Latin purpura into Old English as purpura. Its derived adjective purpuran became purple by a process known as dissimilation, by which one of two similar speech sounds "here/r/) is altered.